The message of this book is that accurate modelling can deliver a more complete understanding of a business and its requirements. The chosen approach is Unified Modelling Language, UML, which is explored early in the book and then used for analysis, specification and mapping. A case study based on a real organisation puts the ideas introduced, including that of the process meta-model, into perspective.

The second edition of Jon Holt's book has been expanded with five new chapters. Some of the new material responds to criticism of the original volume - the emphasis on UML. Opinion on this was divided with some readers feeling it wasn't an appropriate choice of modelling notation. The new edition is still firmly about the benefits of UML but a new chapter entitled Presentation presents mappings to two alternative notations - flowcharts and BPMN, Business Process Modelling Notation - and concludes that they look very similar to the UML mapping. Enterprise Architecture is the topic of another of the new chapters and Holt concludes that "process modelling is actually natural part of a larger-scale enterprise architecture". Helpfully the book now includes the answers to the exercises set at the end of the Case Study.

Recommended if you are looking for practical introduction to using UML (Unified Modeling Language) in business process modelling.

Although there's some information about general database structure as a by-product this book is, as stated on the cover, about the Sybase product, Advantage Database Server. It has been written by two ADS insiders and their enthusiasm for their product is evident. Here we have a cross between a sales pitch, a user manual and a reference work that will be useful to anyone already using or planning to use the product. For existing users it is especially helpful in learning about the new features in versions 8.0 and 8.1 and in wanting. For those looking for an alternative to a full-blown SQL database it provides an insight into ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) structure and shows how ADS provides extensive support for SQL.

Part I starts with the promotional pitch about what Advantage is and what the data access options are. It then covers the basics such as tables, indexes, data dictionaries and views. Part II is about Advantage's own dialect of SQL and covers using QBuilder (like the MS Access QBE), and writing in SQL itself. Part III covers using ADS with various languages including Delphi, Java,.NET, PHP and more and does a good job of explaining the various ways of getting data into and out of ADS. The authors make good use of screen dumps throughout to give a clear and practical account. This is a comprehensive and well written book on ADS that gives a good, if partisan, introduction to the product.

I really didn’t like this “book”. And I use the word “book” very advisedly, as it is really nothing more than a DVD consisting of a set of twenty short, screen-captured videos in which Noyes demonstrates the basics of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). The first problem I found is a purely practical one. Having little videos showing how to perform tasks is fine, especially for the highly interactive nature of the WF designer, but the player is atrociously bad when it comes to jumping around in the videos: it took up to 30 seconds in some cases on my powerful development desktop to attempt to shift forward a minute or two in the video. Annoyingly, there are no quick index points within each video, or any way to mark your own, which makes this product pretty useless if you want to go back and quickly locate something that you watched before.

Incredibly, I could find no captions with the videos, so if you’re audibly challenged then this product is absolutely no use to you whatsoever. Increasingly, print books come with audio versions (or PDF versions that can be used with screen reader technology), so Addison-Wesley clearly understand the importance of accessibility. They just didn’t appear to bother catering for the hard of hearing with this product. I also got really annoyed with the fact that the last minute of every “lesson” was an advert for LiveLessons. Sure, you can skip them, but all I kept thinking was “No, this £50 video is not in the same league as a proper training course (or even a proper book); it never will be; please stop trying to convince me otherwise.”

What’s good about this book is Noyes himself. He presents the material clearly and he covers the basics well. The videos are very practically orientated - very much of the “to do this, drag this here and set this property” nature - with the exception of the first couple of videos that discuss (reasonably well) the architecture and motivation for WF. I just felt short changed that he didn’t write a proper book on the subject, as that would clearly be worth reading.

On a technical level, the material is very basic in its nature. This is by no means a problem if all you want is a high-level overview of WF, but because it barely touches on the important aspects required if you’re going to do any real work with WF, you will need to go out and buy yourself another book.

Considering that this “book” is nearly 50% more expensive than the considerably better Pro WF by Brian Bukovics (ISBN: 1590597788), and will teach you a lot less than the much cheaper Windows Workflow Foundation (Step by Step) by Kent Scribner (ISBN: 073562335X), I find it hard to see the value in this offering. So unless you really hate reading books - and this is the age of YouTube, after all - I’d recommend that you avoid this title.